Surprise, Surprise
by Wanderlustlover
Summary: Sometimes morning-after stories beat the hell out of night-of stories.


**Title:** Surprise, Surprise

**Recipient:** Zorb

**Fandoms:** Farscape/Battlestar Galactica/Star Trek: Voyager

**Summary:** Sometimes morning-after stories beat the hell out of night-of stories.

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Aeryn became aware first of her mouth and throat, the first dry and the second filled with a cloying taste. Then she noted that her head felt as though Moiya had landed right on top of it. Wrinkling her face inward disgustedly, she curled up closer to the sleeping form next to hers, then started rubbing her nose against the blanket while she said, "Anymore crazy nights like that and I'm going to have to kill you."

There came the first sounds of life from the curl of blankets, a half groan, half mutter of annoyance, as Aeryn pushed herself up, gave a precursory glance at the strange sleeping quarters, and began to tug at the blanket.

"And if you persist in taking all the covers, John," she started coolly, taking a fist full of blanket and yanking it forcefully from the sleeping figure, but her slight smile vanished completely as the blankets finally gave way with a shriek from the naked figure beneath as they were revealed. Her sense of the space around her became suddenly much more important as did the realization that her weapon was not on her. So her words were terse, "You're not John."

"What? Who-" The dark skinned woman came up suddenly from the bed. Brown shoulder length hair tussled and knotted, eyes all wide and dark, flashing as though ready for a fight. And as suddenly as she'd come up, she was shifting, tearing the blankets back toward her body face flushing with embarrassment, which seemed only to make her even more enraged. She barked, "Where are my clothes?"

Aeryn looked from the girl warily to around the room, eyes touching on the clothes piles on the floor but scanning for camera's and possible weapons, before she looked back while gesturing toward the floor. Her reply was cool, but her mind was going around all the possibilities, while trying not to shudder against the light of the room. "Looks like more than a few people lost their clothes there."

"More than? Are my?" The woman's sentences seemed each to stop at just starting, as she continued to tug at the blanket harder. Her brows knitted downward revealing to the light of day ridges and folds in her forehead that came down her nose. "Would you mind?"

Perhaps her modicum of decency wasn't the same as this woman's, seeing as she was presently only covered from about her waist down, but the idea of suddenly being bare on the bed caused her some annoyance herself. Holding her section of the blanket in her hands tightly, with no intention of letting go, Aeryn raised an eyebrow delicately. "You've got to be kidding, right?"

B'Ellanna stared angrily at the naked woman on the other side of the bed, thinking only at the moment that something had gone horridly wrong that she wasn't quite sure how she'd explain to Tom. The hard toned woman with the almost black eyes, regarding her with that blank, nonchalant, expression was truly starting to boil her blood.

"I-" She narrowed her eyes at the woman, frowning.

"Am-" She dug her nails deeper into the soft cloth.

"Most-" She shifted back so as to pull with her back.

"Certainly-" She moved slightly again to use her legs as leverage.

"Not." She pulled the blanket suddenly.

And only then realized her mistake. Because the moment she lunged back with the blanket the woman on the bed just let go of it, her thin brows furrowed and lips pursed as though she were staring at a child, and her expression not seeming to shift even when her tanned figure was completely revealed. Not that B'Ellanna saw much more than that as she fell back from the bed on to a lumpy mess.

"Do you mind?" The floor suddenly shifted under her, and she slammed the ground a second time, much harder though, but she barely had time to register that as another head and face, squinting at her, emerged from the lumpy pile –or was that now body?- around her. "Some of us *are* trying to sleep here. Or at least we were before the bumpy landing."

A slight and smothered gasp came from the woman behind her, which seemed to draw the newest persons attention, but B'Ellanna was still staring at the woman emerging from the clothes, and what looked like another blanket, in shock. Maybe even mortification. Because now there was another woman in the room; this time with short cropped blonde hair, sporting at least one nasty bruise on her cheek.

B'Ellanna's cheeks were beginning to burn and she was having second thoughts about whether she even wanted to know what was going on here. "What? Who are you?"

The woman regarded her solemnly for a moment, her bright eyes sparkling with amusement before she began to speak while twisting and reaching for something on the bed table behind them. "Kara. We met last night. Remember?" She was back from reaching for a silver contraption from the table and was picking into it as she waved one hand absently. "In case you're still entirely farbotzed, your name is B'Ellanna and hers is Aeryn. Either of you got a light?"

"I think," the first woman – apparently known as Aeryn- started, gathering everyone's attention. She had apparently now found both a pair of black underwear and a matching stretch shirt. Though she was looking up, her hands were still full of clothes and she appeared to be looking for more still, though her eyes were unfocused as though she was stuck in thought now. "I remember something about dancing on a bar top. That didn't really happen, did it?"

Kara laughed half-smiling, looking at the woman down a long unlit cigar now hanging from her lips, "Yeah, that was still early on in the night, too."

"Why should we believe you? Is there a reason that you seem to be the only one who really remembers what happened last night?" B'Ellanna snarled, ignoring the mutters of 'frelling' and something 'Rigal' from Aeryn, her mouth curved hard, though not nearly as hard as the grip her hands had on the blanket wrapped around her. Her knuckles now fiercely white.

Kara wasn't sure what was more amusing really. That she'd actually agreed to wait till morning to have her cigar and there was still no light or that the firecracker from last night looked even more attractive enraged by her utter confusion. Pushing up and backwards Kara went that direction until she was leaning against a wall. Reaching out with her toes she retrieved the sports bra she always wore under her clothes and leisurely stretched, her lips curling as B'Ellanna scowled.

Looking up as she shrugged the bra over her head, pulling it down her shoulders, she said smartly, "Because the both of you were pretty dunk last night."

"So, what? You took advantage of us? Two drunk women?" The Klingon asked her, lips starting to snarl.

"Right," muttered Aeryn sarcastically from the other side, where she was now pulling up pants and fastening them, standing in the middle of a clear spot in the room that her struggle with the piles seemed to have cleared away.

She was still a beautiful whipcord in the day, Kara noted. Moving just too gracefully and calmly, not like a tree in summer, but like a weapon being raised to be fired. Perfectly trained. Perfectly steady. She turned her gaze to the other, unable to contain her mirth still even with her lips straight and with a shrug said, "I had probably two or three times what either of you had. I may just be better at taking it than either of you or Princess."

"Did you just call me Princess?" Aeryn asked defensively.

"Well, you would be the calmer of the two," Kara stated, smirking as she brushed at a barrage of bruising that was on her shoulder. It wasn't something that could have been done with a weapon. Unless you really considered a hand or a set of teeth a weapon. She'd probably have the bruises for a week, maybe longer.

"You're not saying- No. No." B'Ellanna said, throwing her hands up and then slamming them down when she realized that putting them up made the blanket almost fall. She looked to Aeryn suddenly, as though perhaps looking for the solace or understanding Kara just wasn't giving, and she added more defensively, "I have a husband."

"I've got a son. And a husband-" Aeryn started, her voice weary, almost wincing at whatever reaction B'Ellanna's face gave her that Kara couldn't see, before she shrugged and contained to thrift through things. "-who will never let me live this down. Can anyone see my gun?"

"You're worried about your gun? We all just-" B'Ellanna turned on her in a fury again, and Kara smiled, welcoming it. Partially it reminded her of her parents or her teachers when she'd done something rebellious, but on the other hand, this was just becoming a better and better. "And do you have a husband and family, too?"

Kara started laughing hard at that though, the cigar falling from her lips. She has haphazardly trying to catch it as she replied, "Frack all of that."

"Once again. Anyone? Where's my gun?" Aeryn asked, putting a hand at her hip and starting to glare in the direction of temper tantrum women and reckless, wanton one. Looking at B'Ellanna she rolled her eyes at the growl of being over ridden and yelled, "Get over it already. Yes, there was probably sex. Yes, you'll have to explain it someone. Yes, we all understand your dignity is all deconstructed. Frell woman, you'd think someone beat you or something nearly as terrible. You did it yourself. You got too drunk and had sex with two women."

B'Ellanna's face went ash and red in continuing flushes, though it was only accented even more sharply by the wide smile of approval that came from Kara's tanned and bruised face – a bar brawl, from the night she could barely remember, but bore a bruise for on her thigh from, too. She opened her mouth to respond but Aeryn went on. "Oh, stop standing there looking all wounded and defensive. Find your clothes and go where ever it is you have to go already. I. Want. My. Gun."

Kara, tapping her cigar on her now raised knees, laughed and pointed toward the door, only half watching as B'Ellanna fumed off into clothing piles and starting flinging things every which way. "It's under the table where the coats are. All of them are. They got dropped first so that they didn't end up going off. I think it was around the time when all coherent thought went into its last rational use."

Aeryn nodded and started going for it. There was almost an audible sound of relief and B'Ellanna thought she might have been seeing things when she glanced up from finding her shirt to see Aeryn holding her gun so tenderly it might be a child, but being quickly and roughly shoved it into her hip holster. Pulling the shirt over her head, B'Ellanna asked, "Where are the two of you off to?"

"Gallactica," Kara commented, moving some of the clothing piles with her foot, partially looking for her clothes and mostly just watching the scene.

"Moiya." Aeryn responded, standing hand on the door, and giving a shrug, she added. "I should be going, too, before John and Dargo set this place on fire thinking someone knocked me out and drug me away."

B'Ellanna nodded just barely at her, whilst Kara saluted her with the cigar in her fingers and a smirk on her mouth. After the door swung closed again, she looked across the room at the Klingon woman who was making rapid movements to finish dressing and vanish herself. "So where will you go?"

"Voyager, the ship I serve on," she replied, in a much softer tone than she'd used since waking up, more like the calm after the storm. Her eyes were dark, but they had this slight hollowness to them. "It should be in orbit."

"You didn't do anything," Kara prompted her, again, after watching her search for the rest of her uniform, dress and then to retrieve her weapon as well in perfect silence between them. Regarding her look of immense doubt, Kara effected the serious, straight forward look, of true feeling any soldier could make on demand just this side of being trained and finessed to perfection by training others.

"It was a raucous party last night down there. It got out of hand. You got naked during the bar top dancing and I brought you both here when you seemed like you'd lost most of your control, but before anyone could cart you off." Kara rubbed her shoulder slightly. "You fought back a little more than she did. That was all."

B'Ellanna face tore between a flood of emotions, and she looked like she wanted to say something, and though she started twice she stopped each time before the words formed and came out. Edging toward the door, looking a strange mixture of slightly doubtful and largely relieved, she finally managed. "I should probably go, too. I'd say it was nice to meet you….but, well, it was weird. Just weird."

"Sure," Kara said, as she tipped her head back watching the girl go, before she started searching through the clothes for her shirt. If she remembered right -and she was pretty sure she did since she did remember the whole night with a crystal clarity- it was somewhere about here.

Yanking the shirt out she let herself fall into the clothing pile, finding a strange comfort in the lumpy, misshapen mass, as she searched the pockets for a lighter. Pulling the cigar out from behind her ear she smiled, a soft, slow, languid smile, like a cat basking in sunlight. Light the cigar and taking her first puff, she acknowledged that while her body felt more relaxed than it had in a while she longed already to be flying again.

Nothing beat flying. Nothing.

Not even a night that would top all of the poker night tales.


End file.
